Romney’s ‘Policy Fundraiser’ Tomorrow Reveals Reliance On Ed Advisor Who Set Stage for For-Profit College Abuses

Mitt Romney, who has declared his admiration for for-profit colleges while receiving donations from for-profit education executives, boasts as a top education advisor a former George Bush official whose decisions in government helped unleash a decade of waste, fraud, and abuse by the for-profit college industry.

Politico posted this invitation to a “POLICY ROUNDTABLE MEETING AND EVENING RECEPTION WITH GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY” set for tomorrow in Washington, DC. The invite lists a series of “Industry Finance Chairs” and “Policy Roundtable Leaders” who will attend. The only person who makes both lists — both offering policy expertise and rounding up donations — is Bill Hansen, who served as Deputy Secretary of Education under George W. Bush.

In that capacity, Hansen helped lay the groundwork for well-documented recruiting abuses by for-profit colleges, who receive most of their revenue from taxpayer dollars. Under Hansen, the Bush Education Department, ignoring the advice of university leaders and student advocates, made it easier for for-profit schools to pay recruiters based on the number of students they signed up, despite the fact that such practices were illegal. Hansen sent a memo declaring that the Administration would go easy on violators of the incentive compensation ban, fining offenders rather than ending their eligibility for federal aid. Coercive and deceptive recruiting has helped fuel revenues in the for-profit education industry, but has left many students deep in debt and without useful training or degrees.

Watch Mitt Romney endorse Full Sail University without telling you that Full Sail executives fund his campaign:

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